Maya's First Response to Ch 9

            Within the first few pages of the chapter, the reader sees how the trial is eating away at K. slowly, but surely. To me, this looks like the beginning to K.’s path of becoming Block from the previous chapter. K. is asked to show a business associate around since it is his first time in K.’s city. However, K. cannot think about anything else other than his vice president snooping around the office, looking for errors. K. fears even leaving his own office, making it seem as though he feels he is walking on eggshells. If I may speculate based off of Kafka’s short stories, I have come to believe that there will be no resolution or there will be a tragic ending. Gregor never gets turned back into a human, Georg simply ends his life, the country doctor fails everyone who sought his help. 

            One thing I found interesting was how Kafka (actually, the translator at this point) spent so long describing how difficult it was for K. to follow the business associate’s speech. At a certain point, the narrator of the story says, “If [K.] didn’t understand the Italian at first, he mustn’t let that bother him, he would soon begin to catch on, and even if [he] didn’t understand, that wouldn’t be so terrible”. The way I see it, this can also be applied to what I, as a reader, thought when I first began reading the book. At first, I think the whole group was optimistic about K.’s situation. It did not matter that he didn’t understand what was going on at first; he would learn, adjust, then somehow win his case. I think this was K.’s outlook on things as well up until the point where his options as to a path of action were explained to him. 

           While in the cathedral, K. encounters the prison chaplain. What I find interesting is that he tells K. that he is seeking to much outside help disapprovingly. I feel that he shows disapproval because he wants K. to find it within himself to overcome the state. To put it in terms of the Kafka lecture, he wants the individual to alienate himself from the institutions to further himself and for his own benefit in general. Though I fear that this route might consume K., I think it would be best for him to think for himself and fight his way out of this by his own hand. Most of the outside help he has gotten has been pretty useless anyway.